- Provides formal education
- Students at both private and state-supported secondary schools were exempt from military service and had much the same social prestige as university students enjoy today in South Korea
- Higher education was provided by the Confucian national university in the capital, the Songgyungwan.
- During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern private schools were established both by Koreans and by foreign Christian missionaries
- 93 percent of adults are literary.
